The Ontology of Mythical Characters, Part 3

In the first two posts, I considered some principles concerning stable and unstable data points to show that, among other things, differing genealogical relationships are not enough to insist on creating multiple entities. Io daughter of Iasos and Io daughter of Inachos are not different entities, but reflect the different claims about the relationship of Io to other parts of the mythical storyworld. This is no different from the contested geographical claims to where Zeus was born; “Zeus” remains the same entity despite Arcadia and Crete’s competing claims that he was born in their land. Of course, further narrative elements may belong to each individual location, but the essential “oneness” of Zeus is not seriously in doubt. And variation is expected; as Pausanias puts it simply (8.53.5), “the accounts of the Greeks differ a lot and not least in terms of their genealogies” (οἱ μὲν δὴ Ἑλλήνων λόγοι διάφοροι τὰ πλέονα καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα ἐπὶ τοῖς γένεσίν εἰσι). For MANTO, the challenge is how to corral these varying accounts and create a meaningful set of ontological entities that will allow us to visualize and map the vastness of the Greek mythical storyworld.  

In this post, I will continue to discuss how stable elements help us secure an ontological singularity, but we will confront a problem: how are we to deal with characters that share a name and perhaps stable data point(s), but that are not clearly the same? And what do we do when the author creates a rationalized variant to the original entity (case study #3). Thereupon I will turn to three more case studies (#4–6) that involve the processes of aitiology (explaining where a real object, animal, or cultural phenomenon comes from) and eponymy (explaining where a placename comes from). The case study numbers will start at #3, running continuously from earlier posts. 

Case Study #3: Talos, the Bronze...Man?

In the most famous version from Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (4.1638ff.), Talos is a bronze man, last of the descendants of the Bronze Race, and apparently of enormous size since he can hurl boulders from the shore to prevent the Argonauts from landing on Crete. He was a gift from Zeus to Europa, presumably as compensation for his violation of her. Turning to Apollodorus’ account (Library 2.140–41), we find that there are several varying accounts of Talos: 1) he was a member of the Bronze Race (as in Apollonius), 2) he was made by Hephaestus and given to Minos and was a man made of bronze, but 3) others say that he was a bull. If we take these data points, there exists a stable set of properties: he is bronze (whether in the sense of belonging to the Bronze Race or as a bronze robot of sorts), is centered on Crete, and seems to be the guardian of the island. Even if his anthopomorphic status is in doubt, given that some regard him as a bull, there seems no question that “Talos” is an ontologically separate entity.

Let us, however, turn to a rationalized account of Talos. For those who may not be familiar with rationalization, it is essentially the process of stripping away the unbelievable bits of myth to “recreate” a perfectly normal event that somehow got mythologized. An example can be found at Plato, Minos 320D. Here, we meet a Talos who is described as a human serving as Minos’ defender of laws, travelling three times a year around the island, bearing bronze tablets containing the laws. So Plato dismisses the bronze nature of Talos, but in so doing shows how the myth of a bronze giant walking around Crete in defense of it could have arisen (his carrying bronze tablets leads to misunderstanding that he is bronze). Such rationalizating versions that reduce a mythical monster to an ordinary human can be found elsewhere. For instance, Plutarch cites Philochorus for the view that there was no Minotaur, just a pretty evil guy named Tauros who served as Minos’ general (Life of Theseus 16.1–19.3). In these cases, we are forced create a new entity but link it directly to the original mythical figure. So Tauros is linked directly to, or rather co-referenced with, the Minotaur, and the same could be done with Plato’s Talos. The creation of a new figure is dependent on the existence of a pre-existing figure, though the natures will be different because of the rationalizing approach.

Matters become more complicated when we meet yet another Cretan figure named Talos, but one that is not clearly attached to any stable data point for the Talos mentioned above. Pausanias reports (8.53.5) that, according to Cinaethon (fr. 1 West), there is a Talos who is the biological son of Cres and father of Hephaistos (or perhaps this should be Phaistos—the text is problematic). Cinaethon’s version, however, does not offer any further information about this figure except for a genealogical connection that locates him in Crete, and it places him genealogically two generations before Minos and Rhadamanthys. Here, we have no certainty whether this Talos refers conceptually to the bronze Talos that circles Crete three times. And yet, given that this Talos is a central figure on Crete, it does not seem entirely right to insist on a completely separate ontological figure. 

Thus, it seems necessary to have the ability to create a separate figure, but, like with our rationalized versions, co-reference the new entity with the main ID. But, since there is doubt whether this is the same figure, we should have the ability to give a confidence factor. See figure 1 below. As it happens, we currently use the “may be the same as” feature in MANTO to indicate the possible relationship.

Figure 1: Co-Referencing and Certainty Factor

Case Study #4: Daphne, an Example of Aitiology

Let us now return briefly to the figure Daphne, which was mentioned briefly in our last post. Daphne is a creation of the process of aitiology, that is, she is an invention based on a real object, the laurel tree, created to explain why the laurel tree is dear to Pythian Apollo—or, more generally, where laurel trees come from in the first place. In this way, aitiological and eponymic figures are similar: they are created to explain an existing object or a placename. Like Io, Daphne is given several different fathers and located in different places: daughter of the river Ladon (Arcadia), the hero Amyclas (Laconia), Peneios (Thessaly). Even the Syrians along the river Orontes claimed her as the origin of the luxurious district of Antioch called Daphne (Philostratos, Vit. Ap. 1.16, Libanius Or. 11.94–5; cf. Paus. 8.20.2)—a process which, incidentally, shifts her main function from aitiology (explaining laurel trees and Apollo’s interest in them) to eponymy (explaining where the placename comes from). 

Daphne, however, also has a substantial role in the narrative storyworld. First, as is vividly portrayed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she is famously lusted after by Apollo, flees, and is turned into a laurel tree, fulfilling her aitiological function (for a podcast on Daphne, with additional materials, click here). Second, in a much less well known story, Daphne takes on a different function, that of a virgin follower of Artemis. According to Parthenius (15) and Pausanias (8.20.1), Daphne was a solitary huntress who roamed the mountains of the Peloponnese and caught the eye of one Leucippos, an Eleian and son of Oinomaos, who disguised himself as a young woman with a similar interest in hunting. They became fast friends, and Leucippos achieved a closeness that probably would have led to rape but for Apollo’s own interests in Daphne. The jealous god inspires Daphne and her followers to bathe in a river, and when Leucippos hesitates to disrobe, his deceit is revealed, prompting Daphne and her followers to kill him on the spot. There remains variation in the details of this version: as it happens, Parthenius makes Daphne a Laconian huntress, daughter of Amyclas, who happened to enter Elis while hunting; Pausanias tells the tale in relation to the Arcadian river Ladon, the source of which sits quite close to Elis.

Functionally, Daphne’s agency is limited to hunting and seems in part calculated to explain why she is found in wild places; otherwise, she is simply the object of Leucippos’ and Apollo’s lust. Aitological myths of this type are normally accompanied by some narrative element that explains a change from the named figure (Daphne) to the named object (daphne, or laurel); one could cite countless examples where the narrative is calculated to lead to the existence of an object or animal (see Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoses or Ovid’s work by the same name). This example of aitiology, where a real object leads to the creation of a mythical figure by the same name, leads us to its counterpart, eponymy, where a figure comes into existence to explain a placename. In both cases, however, the ontological existence of these figures lies not in genealogy, but in their function as aitiolog or eponym. There may be separate claims to these figures, but their central ontology is bound in this function. 

For our case studies involving eponymy (#5 and 6), I’ll turn to Pausanias’ account of Arcadia and focus on two mythical characters, Cydon and Maira, the son and wife of Tegeates son of Lycaon (8.53.1–4). 

Case Study #5: Cydon, Eponym of Cydonia

In his account of Tegea, Pausanias notes that Apollo and Artemis toured the world to take vengeance on those lands that did not pay heed to their mother Leto when she was wandering while pregnant (8.53.1–5; Pausanias may be nodding to Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, where Tegea is the first place Leto visits). The gods’ arrival in Tegea occurs in the reign of Tegeates, who is of course the eponym of the city. After reporting a squabble between two of Tegeates’ five sons that left them both dead, Pausanias goes on to report that, despite Tegeates and his wife’s attempt to avert the gods’ wrath, a great famine befell the land. As a result, his three remaining sons migrated from Tegea to Crete and founded cities. One of these is Cydon who, Pausanias reports, goes on to found Cydonia in NW Crete; we’ll focus on him although the same can be said for the other two founders as well.

Cydon’s main role—and only role as far as we can tell—is to be the eponymous founder of the city Cydonia. The Tegean tradition claims this figure for themselves, establishing the importance of the early Arcadians in forming the Greek landscape, including on Crete. Pausanias reports, however, that the Cretans dispute the Tegeans’ account. According to them, Cydon is the son of Hermes and Acacallis, the daughter of Minos—so, a local figure. This account is seconded by the entry in the geographical encyclopedia of Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Κυδονία), which says that Cydonia was founded by Cydon, the son of Apollo and Acacallis; the name of the father is driven here by the fact that the city was first called Apollonia. The scholia to Apollonius Rhodius (4.1492) states that Acacallis slept with both Apollo (giving birth to Naxos) and Hermes (Cydon), so some confusion in the traditions is certain.

Be that as it may, the basic principle here can be summed up as follows: an eponymic figure’s ontological basis is almost always best understood as related specifically to the placename. Thus, Cydon’s identifying and stable feature is simply “eponym of Cydonia,” not any relationship to a genealogical tree. MANTO’s ties will then capture the different claims and genealogies of this entity and can capture the complexity of the claims to this eponymic figure.

Case Study #6: Proliferating Characters: Maira. 

Finally, let us consider Tegeates’ wife in Pausanias’ account. She is called Maira and is said to be a daughter of Atlas. Her tomb is shown alongside her husband’s in the city of Tegea (8.48.6, 8.53.3). Earlier in his account of Arcadia, however, Pausanias had visited the ruins of a village (κώμη) called Maira, located just outside of Mantinea. Here there is another tomb of Maira (Paus. 8.12.7). This, of course, complicates the issue for him: Maira cannot be buried in both places, and, although he could just let things stand without taking a side (as elsewhere), in this case he prefers the version of the Tegeans. Thus far, there is no complication for assigning a single identity of Maira; just as in the case of Cydon above, the figure Maira is singular (wife of Tegeates and eponym of Maira), but there are competing claims about the figure. However, Pausanias’ desire to reconcile these competing claims is so strong that he invents a second Maira to solve the conundrum: perhaps (τάχα δ᾿ ἄν) the Maira buried in Mantineia was another woman by that name, a descendant of Tegean Maira. For our purposes, Pausanias’ claim of a separate entity altogether means that we must create a separate entry for the invented Maira, descendant of Tegean Maira. And, because this invented Maira does not have any other connection to the mythical world, the creation of this additional figure does not present any further challenges.

Conclusion

The mythical storyworld—that is, as it developed in an evolutionary fashion—came to include additional stories that sought to explain names and places. In other words, the function of the entities created are predicated on the interest in explaining an existing part of the world—and so recognizing, in part, the inventive nature of myth. More to our point, these figures tend to have a fundamentally different status from those “biographical” characters that have leading parts in the narrative components of major literary (or oral) works, an Achilles, a Perseus, a Circe, a Tydeus.